“For Fuck’s sake, give me the money”, on first of any month,
one of my roommates, Jigar Jogi, would yell. Sabu and I would conveniently
ignore his tantrums, show him our piteous faces and beg for few more days’ time.
Each such interaction would make him morose and further irrelevant in our daily
lives.
Sabu and I, on the other hand, were blood brothers. Not like
blood brothers but, blood brothers. Every quarter or so, we went to nearby
blood donation camp to eat biscuits, cookies, drink coffee and donate blood.
Since then, the local clinic’s nurse had affectionately started calling us
blood brothers – we liked this almost vampire like name. Even though we were
miles away from the wisdom of Ms Myers and looks of Mr Pattinson, we liked our tag.
Sabu and Jigar had one thing in common – both looked handsome
and attractive but that is about it. The moment Jigar Jogi opened his mouth, a peculiar
sound, like that of a whistle, would steal his thunder away. The harder he
tried to control that sound, the funnier he looked. It was a pity, really but
then, it was funny too. I, on the other side, looked sluggishly normal. Everything
about me, was pretty much common: face, height, hairstyle, build, except one
thing. I read, drank and ate like no one is watching.
Jigar Jogi and I, were students in FTII. He was learning to make
chillum and I was training to score. We had our tasks cut out and every month,
on the first day, our first and foremost goal was to score for the month – this
came before our rent, grocery, entertainment etc. On this, subject, we all
agreed that we had to secure our supplies of the month but, Sabu and I were not
fixated on the beginning of the month. I mean, honestly, we could save some,
borrow some, steal some even though stealing is bad, just like a generation before
ours did but, NO, it had to be done on first.
“What the fuck, man?”, I said, pleasantly surprised, looking
at a house full of smoke and some fresh faces at our rented abode. I slowly walked
past intoxicated bunch of new faces wearing salvaar-kameez. I went inside my
room, appreciating quality of the smoke and the mouths that it came out of. I
changed into shorts and t-shirt and stepped back inside the living room. Hold chants
were making the environment even more surreal when I heard a voice coming from
a distance, “For Fuck’s sake, give me the money”
